Micron Enhances Business Agility with Rapid App Development in QuickBase

As the consumer-facing division of global memory giant Micron Technology, Micron CPG offers Crucial DRAM and SSD solutions, as well as Lexar memory cards and USB flash drives through e-tail, retail, and reseller channels. Like any company with teams in almost every corner of the globe, getting processes to flow smoothly can be challenging.

For example, Micron CPG needed a better way to manage its discount request process, which spanned multiple teams and locations, and wasn't managed by a single software solution. Sales reps would request discounts by email, but depending on the circumstances, they might need approval from the pricing team, product marketing team, finance department, or a global sales executive — or sometimes a combination of those.

"What would happen was a sales rep would have five or six requests open, and they had no way to tell where they were in the process. The end result was that sales reps had to wait for a response. Everyone was frustrated with the process," says John Harvey, Business Intelligence Manager, Micron CPG.

Fortunately, the Micron CPG team saw an opportunity to solve the challenge quickly with QuickBase. The team has used QuickBase to automate a number of manual processes that require collaboration from distributed teams and with multiple sources of data.

To smooth the discount request process, the team built a Pricing Request app on the QuickBase platform. With little or no prior QuickBase experience, the team was able to get the Pricing Request app up and running in less than one week.

The app stores updated price lists and uses built-in formula fields to enable sales reps to perform discount calculations quickly — no spreadsheets required. Automated notifications route discount requests to the next approver, so the request is always in front of the right person or team. Built-in reporting features allow sales reps to check in on the status of any request at any time.

The results speak for themselves. Not only are sales reps now able to check in on the status of a request quickly and from any device, but those requests are also handled much faster. The average response time for a discount decision has been reduced by 93% in a key process that arms the sales team to close deals faster and increase overall revenues.